Home » Arts & Culture » Performance (Page 8)

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  Bloody Bess, Part II

  Anda Korsts, Chicago, NHPRC, Performance, Roots of Video

  This tape features footage from a 1974 performance of “Bloody Bess,” produced by the Organic Theater Company in Chicago and performed at the Uptown Center Hull House Theater. The play was conceived by Stuart Gordon and written by William J. Norris and John Ostrander. It tells the story of Elizabeth Presberty, daughter of the Governor of the island of Tobago. After being taken prisoner by a group of pirates, she returns home to face betrayal and the murder of her family members. She eventually transforms herself into Bloody Bess, a rugged pirate captain out to bring those who have done her wrong to justice.

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  Second City Relics

  Anda Korsts, Chicago, GDDF, NHPRC, Performance

  This tape captures a Second City performance from 1972 featuring John Belushi, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, Jim Staahl, Jim Fisher, Judy Morgan, and Eugenie Ross-Leming.

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  Three Segments of Performances

  Chicago, Communities, Latinx, NHPRC, Outside Agitators, Performance

  This tape features layoffs of three performances by activists and musicians Andres Jimenez, Jose de Molina, and Marta Rodriguez. Each segment lasts for about a minute, and was recorded at a Puerto Rican Nationalist event.

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  [Andres Jimenez performance]

  Chicago, Communities, Latinx, NHPRC, Outside Agitators, Performance

  This tape features footage from a Puerto Rican Nationalist support dinner. Musician Andres Jimenez performs for the audience.

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  Sam’s Cafe: A Media Inversion

  Guerrilla TV, NHPRC, Outside Agitators, Performance, Roots of Video

  This tape documents the activities of and media response to the Sam’s Cafe Three (David Schier, Marc Keyser, and Terri Keyser), a group that created several dramatic publicity stunts in order to demonstrate that the new way of protesting effectively should be by utilizing the media itself. The group sent out fake utility collection notices to 20,000 people in the Bay area with the return address of a local TV station and also sent excrement to local news media offices. Sam’s Cafe member Marc Keyser explains, “This is a work of art and it’s a sample of the inversion of mass media. Now this has begun and it stopped. Next time when the inversion of mass media begins, it will not stop.” It is an exciting and humorous look at a moment in time when the one-way flow of information through television was under heavy critique and the new technologies of portable video cameras and cable television seemed to offer an alternative.

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  Tuli’s Montreal Revolt

  Guerrilla TV, NHPRC, Outside Agitators, Performance, Roots of Video, Sex, Drugs, & Rock 'N Roll

  This tape features footage from a performance and rehearsal of Tuli Kupferberg’s Revolting Theatre. The performance footage was videotaped at McGill University in Montreal on March 5, 1971, while the rehearsal excerpts were taped throughout late 1969 and early 1970. The cast was Kupferberg; his best friend and collaborator, the late Lannes Kenfield (Aka “Lanny”); Tuli’s first son, Joey Sacks; Liz Reisner; Kupferberg’s wife Sylvia Topp; and Sandra Mobray Clarke, aka “Sandy Nisson.”

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  Ballad of A.J. Weberman

  Guerrilla TV, NHPRC, Outside Agitators, Performance, Roots of Video, Sex, Drugs, & Rock 'N Roll

  Writer, Bob Dylan enthusiast, and coiner of the term “Dylanology,” A.J. Weberman sorts through Dylan’s garbage outside of his New York apartment in order to explain his methods of gathering and interpreting Dylan data. Bookended by David Peel & The Lower East Side playing “The Ballad of A.J. Weberman.”

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  I Am A Woman

  NHPRC, Outside Agitators, Performance, Roots of Video

  This tape features footage from a women’s art show with audio of poetry readings by women.